Cyprus anticrisis program is political decision – former presidential candidate

Every time Cyprus goes to the UN Security Council, it invokes Moscow's assistance to stop Security Council resolutions that are quite often not in favor of Cyprus

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NICOSIA, March 26 (Itar-Tass) – The agreement on the Cyprus anticrisis program reached in Brussels on Monday night is "a well-engineered political decision," former presidential candidate from the left-wing party Stavros Malas said in an interview to Itar-Tass. Malas lost the election to Nicos Anastasiadis a month ago.

"Instead of deciding to give us the 17 billion which should have been given in any case, they decided to give us only 10 billion, and take the remaining money from the depositors in Cyprus, targeting in particular, the Russian depositors which are about one-third of depositors here," Malas underlined.

"During the election campaign, representatives of the incumbent government made several declarations which made the graveyard of the Cyprus economy. The first was that it would manage the economic crisis in the context of the Troika /the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund/, irrespective of cost or time needed. "At no time did the then Opposition and the government indicate that they'd be willing to get out of the troika.

"The second pre-election commitment they made was that they would follow a more pro-Western and pro-NATO foreign policy. And they indicated they did not like the direct involvement of Russia" in the troika efforts," Malas said.

Having decided to implement the "haircut" of deposits and knowing that this "haircut" would hit the Russians, the troika, in the first place the IMF, also hit the political bonds which Cyprus had been developing with Moscow for a long time.

"Of course, that has strong political implications," he went on to say.

Every time Cyprus goes to the UN Security Council, it invokes Moscow's assistance to stop Security Council resolutions that are quite often not in favor of Cyprus. "If we now break the bonds – the political bonds – between Cyprus and Russia, then essentially we will neutralize the Russian component in relation to how we handle the Cyprus issue. That is why this has been done.

"It is a doctrine that has been imposed in Latin America over a long period of time by the IMF in order to impose a political agenda in a country" and carry out "shock therapy" in the economy.

They used the German election as an opportunity to start building this anti-Russian argument, saying that German citizens do not have to pay for Russian tycoons hiding their money in Cyprus. Such statements might find understanding of the German public, but they have nothing to do with reality because there are 435 billion euros of Russian money deposited in Germany, Malas said adding he believed that some money that had already left Cyprus had gone to Germany.